Tools/French to IPA
French to IPA converter
Convert French text to IPA phonetic transcription. See the IPA, hear the word, and turn it into review-ready flashcards — without leaving what you are reading.
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French in IPA
9 worked examples, each chosen for a sound the spelling hides.
hello — nasal vowel, uvular r
bird — six letters, three sounds
a lot — the final p is silent
woman — the e is said /a/
sir — nothing like the spelling
time — five letters, two sounds
wine — front nasal vowel
girl, daughter — ill as a glide
hour — the h is never pronounced
French sounds to know
The symbols that come up most often in French transcription, and what each one actually asks your mouth to do.
| Letter | Example | IPA | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|
| an, am, en, em | temps | /ɑ̃/ | A nasal vowel: air through the nose, and no /n/ consonant is pronounced at all. |
| on, om | bonjour | /ɔ̃/ | The rounded back nasal vowel. The n is part of the vowel, never a separate sound. |
| in, im, ain, ein | vin | /ɛ̃/ | The front nasal vowel — the one English speakers most often replace with a plain vowel plus n. |
| u | tu | /y/ | Front rounded: /i/ with rounded lips. Saying /u/ instead turns tu into tout. |
| eu, œu (open) | heure | /œ/ | An open-mid front rounded vowel, used in closed syllables. |
| eu (closed) | peu | /ø/ | The close-mid partner of /œ/, used in open syllables. The spelling is the same for both. |
| r | rouge | /ʁ/ | A single uvular sound produced at the very back of the mouth — not trilled, not the English r. |
| gn | montagne | /ɲ/ | A palatal nasal, one sound rather than n followed by y. |
| j, ge, gi | je | /ʒ/ | The voiced counterpart of /ʃ/ — the s in English measure, but at the start of a word. |
| ill, y | fille | /j/ | A glide. The double l is not an l sound; ville is one of the rare exceptions. |
How French writing maps to sound
French spelling records the history of the word, not its current sound: beaucoup is eight letters and four phonemes, oiseau is six letters with not one of them pronounced as its alphabet value. Grammatical endings (-s, -e, -ent) are usually silent too, so the written and spoken forms of a verb can be identical across four persons.
Which French do these transcriptions show?
Transcriptions follow standard metropolitan (Parisian) French. Southern French keeps a final schwa that Paris drops and distinguishes vowels Paris has merged; Quebec French has extra diphthongs and affricates t and d before i and u. The nasal vowels differ noticeably between all three.
Why guess French pronunciation?
French writes far more letters than it pronounces. Final consonants are often silent, vowels nasalise, words link together in connected speech (liaison), and the r is a single uvular sound nothing like the English r — none of which the spelling reveals on its own.
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